Talks On Easing Trade Rules Begin In Geneva

GENEVA — Nations accounting for 85 percent of world commerce began formal preparations Monday for a new round of global trade liberalization talks.

A preparatory committee started its work at the Geneva headquarters of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

The committee is open to all 90 member states of the world trade regulatory agency and is charged with drafting a detailed agenda for the new round of negotiations by July.

The agenda will then go for adoption to a ministerial conference in September that will in turn signal the formal opening of the new talks, which are aimed at preventing a protectionist trade war.

The talks, which will last four or five years, will cover as many as 100 issues ranging from regular import duties on farm and manufactured goods to hidden trading barriers like subsidies.

The United States initiated the idea of a new round on grounds that failure to take action would prompt an all-out global trade war.

Washington wants the talks to cover, for the first time, trade in service industries such as banking, insurance and shipping.

That is being opposed by some Third World countries that say their fledgling services sectors would be exposed to takeover by Western

multinational corporations.

GATT, established in 1948, provided the framework for such previous trade liberalization negotiations as the Kennedy Round of the 1960s and the Tokyo Round of the 1970s.

Once known as a ``rich man`s club`` of Western industrial nations, GATT members now account for nearly all world trade. China, the Soviet Union and East Germany are the only significant nations that aren`t members.

China is increasingly taking part in GATT activities but is excluded from preparations for the new talks pending full membership because observers are not permitted, GATT officials said.